I have a new story today about Michelle Obama's visit to Zanesville, Ohio, where she met with a group of women at a local day care center. According to the U.S. Census, Muskingum County, where Zanesville is located, had a median household income of $37,192 in 2004, below both the Ohio and national averages. Just 12.2 percent of adults in the county have a bachelor's degree or higher, also well below the state and national averages. About 20 percent don't have a high school degree. Nevertheless, Mrs. Obama urged them to foreswear lucrative professions like corporate law or hedge fund management and go into the helping industry, even if the sacrifice is great:

-As she has many times in the past, Mrs. Obama complains about the lasting burden of student loans dating from her days at Princeton and Harvard Law School. She talks about people who end up taking years and years, until middle age, to pay off their debts. The salaries dont keep up with the cost of paying off the debt, so youre in your 40s, still paying off your debt at a time when you have to save for your kids, she says.

Barack and I were in that position, she continues. The only reason were not in that position is that Barack wrote two best-selling books It was like Jack and his magic beans. But up until a few years ago, we were struggling to figure out how we would save for our kids. A former attorney with the white-shoe Chicago firm of Sidley & Austin, Obama explains that she and her husband made the choice to give up lucrative jobs in favor of community service. We left corporate America, which is a lot of what were asking young people to do, she tells the women. Dont go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and were encouraging our young people to do that. But if you make that choice, as we did, to move out of the money-making industry into the helping industry, then your salaries respond. Faced with that reality, she adds, many of our bright stars are going into corporate law or hedge-fund management.

What she doesnt mention is that the helping industry has treated her pretty well. In 2006, the Chicago Tribune reported that Mrs. Obamas compensation at the University of Chicago Hospital, where she is a vice president for community affairs, jumped from $121,910 in 2004, just before her husband was elected to the Senate, to $316,962 in 2005, just after he took office. And that does not count the money Mrs. Obama receives from serving on corporate boards. She would have been O.K. even without Jacks magic beans.

Mrs. Obama also bemoaned the amount of money she has to spend  nearly one-third of the median household income in Zanesville  on piano, dance, and other lessons for her two children. But she was grateful for the concern her husband's supporters have shown for her. "Everywhere I go, no matter what, the women in the audience, their first question for me is, 'How on earth are you managing it, how are you keeping it all together?'" she told the women.

The are, quite simply “The Black Clintons”.
All the patterns are the same.
Except that now, “IT’S THEIR TURN”
Wonder what Toni Morrison would say about her “First Black President” now being usurped by a “real” Black presidential possibility?
The supreme poetic justice in all of this is that the Clintons paved the way for all of this, (their political burial) while being too stupid to see it coming.

Gee Michelle, you chose to go to Princeton and Harvard. That costs. Poor you. You could have gone to a state university and a state law school. It wouldn’t have been as prestigious, but you still would have been an attorney, made a really good living and not had the big student loans. You chose the Rolls Royce and had to pay for it. I’m not going to shed one tear for you. And to whine to women who work just to put food on the table about the cost of piano and dance lessons for your privileged children is just unreal. But, as Marie Antionette said, “They have no bread? Well, let them eat cake.”

Don't go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and weÂre encouraging our young people to do that.

***As she has many times in the past, Mrs. Obama complains about the lasting burden of student loans dating from her days at Princeton and Harvard Law School. She talks about people who end up taking years and years, until middle age, to pay off their debts.***

What a whiner! She knew when she got the loan she would have to pay it back. If she had made it a priority, she could have paid it off in just a few years. I wonder if the reason why it took so long is that she let it slide and accrued a huge amount of interest and penalties? If it hadn’t been for Barrack’s “magic bean book deal,” she’d be just another deadbeat. Michelle “Deadbeat” Obama.

I have no patience with people who whine over student loans. There is no more valuable an investment than education. The 200k someone would pay to go to Princeton and Harvard Law School is a pittance compared to what such a graduate could earn if money is what matters to him or her. Oscar Wilde defined a cynic as someone “who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing”.

Of course. :0) I’ve worked for a couple of major corporations and have done engineering consulting for dozens of hospitals.

“Community relations” (in general) is a department held in contempt by other departments in a corporation. This is because Community Relations doesn’t do a d@mn thing other than attend luncheons, black tie events, and hog the corporate sky box tickets. They also have the attitude that they have the MOST IMPORTANT job in a company. We have someone in our Community Relations department who has the Michele Obama attitude problem. She’s universally regarded as incompetent and unpleasant, but keeps her job nonetheless.

My personal experience is that Community Relations departments house high numbers of women and minorities—it’s a corporation’s way of saying, “We’re not really racist and sexist!!” LOL

Basically, its like, dont go into corporate America so you can earn less than you would otherwise, which will of course make you resent corporate America even more, so that you will continue to vote for people like us, who will keep telling you how bad your life is and how its all the fault of corporate America and that they should paypaypay with high taxes so we can give you the things you would otherwise be able to provide for yourself. Blech.

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